homeless shelters

The Homeless are Cold, Freezing.

Much of the country is being hit by extremely cold weather. This is a plea to remember the homeless. There are many. Oregon has less shelter capacity than most places, which means there are thousands of people stuck outside. Currently it is frozen and frigid outside. "Warming stations" open at night to get more people inside, but with limited capacity.

New rule from HUD

The Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a new regulation yesterday requiring federally funded homeless shelters to house transgender people in accordance with their gender identities.

The new rule, which covers all single-sex shelters funded through the HUD's Office of Community Planning and Development (CPD), seeks to ease widespread difficulty among the transgender population in accessing single-sex shelters — particularly those for women.

Transgender people already experience disproportionate rates of homelessness. And according to one study published earlier this year by the Center for American Progress, they also face pervasive anti-trans bias in the process of seeking shelter. Just 30 percent of shelters across four states said they were willing to house transgender women with other women, the study found.

HUD regulations for transgender people in homeless shelters

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has been finalizing its rules for the treatment of transgender people in shelters and the new regulations are scheduled to be released in September.

The new regulations are expected to require homeless shelters that receive federal support to treat transgender people as members of the gender with which they identify.

Transgender women are women regardless of whether they were born male.

If you’re a transgender woman and you walk into a homeless shelter and they treat you like a man, it’s traumatizing. These people are already vulnerable, they’re homeless, they don’t have a job. To face discrimination the entire time they’re there is a real problem.

--David Stacy, Human Rights Campaign